Matwork! 2012 London Olympics Buildup, Dan Gable Sermon, Almaty World Masters Results

Recent happenings in the worlds of sambo, judo, Brazilian jiu jitsu, submission grappling and/or collegiate/freestyle wrestling. If it takes place on the ground and it's interesting, it should be here.

The weather outside is cold in the Northern hemisphere, but inside the gyms all over the world, the training rooms are hot, smelly and full of young and old grapplers looking to develop and refine their technique and physical condition. A rarefied few are training for the 2012 Olympics in London, England. Now, Brazilian jiu jitsu is not an Olympic sport (and probably should not be), but judoka and freestyle wrestlers worldwide have been convinced that these specific bits of shiny metals are extremely valuable and are prepared to go through physical and mental hells to get them.

Since most of those reading this column are not those judoka or wrestlers - if you are, please let this be read during your downtime - we do not get to watch them until the bright lights are upon the Olympic mats. We miss the years of training, the highs and lows of pursuing athletic success and the individual characteristics that make each person unique. Unlike NBC condensing these stories into schmaltz and cramming them down our throats, Zach Smart, a former wrestler turned videographer, has spent quite some time around some wrestlers who are Olympic hopefuls. Those hours of lugging around the cameras have produced a teaser trailer of Ithaka, which shows at least the beginnings of what looks to be one of the best sports documentaries I've ever seen.

Ithaka Teaser from Zach Smart on Vimeo.

Smart plans to continue rolling through August and capture as much as he possibly can. On the list of very good ideas that may need some future support, this could be somewhere in the region of an English language Buivasar Saitiev documentary.

Below the jump, a rambling Dan Gable sermon delivered while boxing, Jose Aldo's early days as a submission grappler, the Almaty World Masters judo results, several updates on the collegiate wrestling scene, the start to the International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation competition scene and perhaps the most bizarre set of "martial arts" pictures I have ever seen. The column closes out with camel wrestling and two cats grappling to Guile's theme.

If you have any video or article links of your own or questions and comments, leave them below or get word to me at DefGrappler on Twitter. Please let me know if I missed anything major and I will fix this, that and the other thing.

A list of official crew Twitter accounts is right here for your pickings: BloodyElbow Twitter, Luke Thomas, Kid Nate, Brent Brookhouse, Leland Roling, Richard Wade, Chris Barton, Damon O,Scott Broussard, Tim Burke, Matt Bishop, Fraser Coffeen, Dallas Winston, KJ Gould, Matt Roth, Anton Tabuena, T.P. Grant.

Wrestling News:

The following video may appear to be of a crazy old coot walking around, yammering and whaling on a heavy bag with terrible technique, but it is actually Dan Gable, legendary wrestler and Iowa coach, delivering a long talk to Mark Bader about the purpose of workouts and perhaps a look into just how fierce the focus and dedication an elite wrestler needs to have in order to be an elite wrestler.

Watch more video of Dan Gable on flowrestling.org

The current top dog team in folkstyle wrestling is Penn State, trained by Cael Sanderson and featuring one of the most dominant wrestlers in the country in David Taylor at 174 lbs. Fourteen of Taylor's eighteen wins have been by fall or technical fall (vastly outscoring the other wrestler until the match is called). His technical fall win in the match against Iowa's Mike Evans at 165 was condensed into a highlights clip over at Flowrestling. Penn State looks to be in great shape for the NCAA championships later this year and Cael has recently said that he is leaning towards focusing on the team and not competing in the Olympic Trials in two months.

New York has been producing some top-notch talent and Cornell is no longer the sole diamond in the rough. Binghampton, ranked #24 at the time, gave #5 ranked Cornell all their team could handle in a narrow 22-21 criteria-decided dual meet. Kyle Dake and Cam Simaz picked up a couple of falls and continued their build towards NCAA gold.

The Guelph Open was held five days ago in Guelph, Canada. The wrestlers involved were all North American, but the competition was surprisingly tough. Themat.com has the results and it looks like Andrew Howe is going to be one extremely tough opponent for Jordan Burroughs to beat in two months.

The InterMat rankings are updated and out for your reading pleasure. T.R. Foley, maybe my favorite wrestling writer, has a good look at this week's UFC on Fox 2 card regarding the card's reliance upon former collegiate wrestlers.

The judo competitive season kicked off with a great event in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Several dozen of the finest competitors on the planet showed up and grappled at the World Masters. The Japanese team retained their typical share of the medals, but it seems that China and Brazil have replaced France and Korea temporarily as serious medals contenders. Tiago Camilo, ">subject of much discussion in the last Matwork! issue, finished third in his -90 kg division. IntJudo.eu has the results for Day 1 and Day 2 if you'd care to view them. GreekJudo and Judohatti have uploaded a ton of Almaty 2012 World Pro matches on YouTube, so matching the recap to the actual matches is possible. Remember that all of this is a build-up to the London Olympics and the competition is getting fierce for those national team spots.

My favorite throw of the tournament came as Masashi Nishiyama beat Kiril Voprosov with a very nifty foot sweep (scored a yuko, rather than an ippon) in the -90 kg finals. This specific ashi waza is something akin to a counter to a counter to a counter and Nishiyama makes it look somewhat easy.

The semi-finals of the -100 kg category saw Maxim Rakov (of Kazakhstan) beat the world champion and current #1 ranked judoka in his division, Anai Takamasa with an extremely sweet foot sweep. The judo people call it okuri ashi harai and you can see for yourself how sweet that technique can be.

The 2012 IBJJF European Championships are being held right now in Lisbon, Portugual. The official page and strangely formatted brackets can be glimpsed here, but the best updates will come from Twitter feeds of competitors, referees and grappling journalists. I have a soft spot in my heart for Rafael Lovato Jr., who is competing in the Medium Heavy division, but he faces stiff challenges within the division with Rodolfo Vieira, the newest superstar in the sport staring at him from the other half of the bracket. The men's black belt divisions look a bit thinned out, perhaps because newer competitions with cash prizes are starting to attract bigger and better crowds of competitors.

One such tournament is the Abu Dhabi World Pro, which held its Rio de Janeiro qualifiers last week. The athletes of Grapple Fight Team, begun by Julio Cesar Pereira, did astoundingly well as five GF Team competitors won their respective divisions and all-expenses paid trips to the Abu Dhabi World Pro later this year. Rodolfo Vieira was predictably the winner of his division and Ricardo Evangelista, Vitor Henrique, Vinicius Marinho and Theodoro Canal joined him. Some photos are available over on GracieMag.

The gi and no-gi Gracie Nationals will be held on the 28th and 29th. The rules are a bit quirky in that the competitor must submit their opponent within fifteen minutes to win. No points or advantages are awarded. If nobody is submitted, both competitors are out of the bracket. More information can be found here and I am curious to see if match videos pop up later.

GracieMag has a nice rundown of some early Jose Aldo grappling matches. Only one video features, but Marcelo Dunlop managed to get some nice recollections of the details for each match. From reading the article, it becomes apparent that Aldo is a ferocious competitor in both BJJ and MMA.

Christian Graugart, a Danish brown belt and the best BJJ blogger anywhere, returned to Moldova to teach a seminar. What makes this special is that Moldova is essentially the furthest place in Europe from any solid grappling or economic base possible - and there is still a group of young people trying to learn submission grappling out there. Graugart made some connections in Moldova on his trip through the country last year in the early going of his BJJ Globetrotter project.

The blog Journey BJJ has two solid interviews with Alec Baulding and Jonathan Thomas.

The FightWorks podcast sat down with Marcelo Garcia for some time and that is probably a great usage of that spare hour you would probably spend watching YouTube videos.